Leisure Informatics is a new specialisation in ICT. It deals with the application of ICT in all leisure areas.

1. Rohan de Silva PhD
CQUniveristy, Australia
r.desilva@cqu.edu.au
Proceedings of IMBIC, Volume 2, ISBN 978-81-925832-2-8

2.  Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) has changed the way we work, live and
socialise.
 Several Informatics areas have emerged such
as:
◦ business informatics, environmental informatics,
health informatics, bio-informatics and social
informatics.
 No informatics area to cover all leisure
activities, though ICT is being used in almost
all leisure areas.

3.  Short: Application of ICT in leisure activities.
 Formal: gathering, processing, analysing,
storage and dissemination of leisure
information to facilitate decision making.
 Includes all areas of leisure: sports &
recreation, tourism & hospitality, music &
entertainment, racing & gaming and
meditation & relaxation.

4.  Already play a considerable role in most of
these areas.
 Sports – player and game statistics, decision
making - AFL in Australia.
 Tourism & hospitality – tour packages, supply
chain management, tourist profile.
 Music & entertainment - Music melody
structure mining, taste of music specific to a
genre category - Honours student.

5.  Racing & gaming – Informatics is in use for a
long time, betting, mobile game applications.
 Meditation and relaxation – A very few
applications – benefits of meditation for
personal wellbeing.
 Need a different skill set compared to
business informatics (data mining +
statistics):
◦ Big data in business informatics – accuracy is not
very visible.
◦ In sports and music – accuracy is important.

6.  A possible market at executive postgraduate
level for people from leisure areas.
 The scholarly work of leisure informatics is
scattered in mathematics, statistics, tourism,
sports, computer science, music, relaxation,
information systems and information
management.
 Promote communication and cross pollination.
 Make it easier to move across in the careers of
these areas.
 Funding can be generated within the discipline
itself – organising leisure activities.

7.  An executive masters or a masters degree by
course work.
 A common leisure informatics core.
 A set of specialisation courses.
 An industry-based project.
 A masters by research – for people involved
in or are planning to work in data analytics.
 Need to have skills in statistics and data
mining.

8.  Vision: To be the global leader in providing eco-friendly solutions to
leisure informatics problems.
 Mission: We assist in linking the professionals in leisure industries with
the academic researchers in informatics to solve leisure informatics
issues. We encourage a pragmatic approach to ensue delivering a
finished product or a service that is environmentally sustainable.
 Values: We value the highest level of ethics and integrity and are
committed to minimise the carbon footprint in all our actions.
 Objectives: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has
changed the way we work, live and enjoy our free time. Leisure
Informatics field was invented to bring the applications of ICT in all
leisure areas, such as sports & recreation, tourism & hospitality, music &
entertainment, racing & gaming and meditation & relaxation under one
roof. Leisure Informatics Society is the first group that recognises the
importance of, and the benefits that can be reaped from, this union. Our
goal is to facilitate academics in informatics and the industry experts in
each of these leisure areas to work collaboratively and develop
environmentally sustainable solutions to the problems. We encourage
cross-pollination of ideas and expertise among our members who come
from all the above areas of leisure.

9.  Sections: Presently, there are five sections; sports
& recreation, tourism & hospitality, music &
entertainment, racing & gaming and meditation &
relaxation.
 Membership: We plan to have two members in
each section as the mentors and moderators.
Around 50% of the members will be drawn from
the academia and the rest will be senior experts
or practitioners from each of the leisure
industries. The idea is for the academic members
to undertake research and teaching in leisure
informatics in collaboration with the members
from industry, and convert any research
outcomes to finished products or services.

10.  Leisure informatics stands on its own merits.
 Maths, stats and data mining can play a large
role.
 Need a separate discipline area.

12. Thank You

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